EyeWriter

By Kayla WebleyThursday, Nov. 11, 2010

Jamie Chung for TIME

How do you communicate when your brain is active but your body isn't? The EyeWriter, a collaboration from the Ebeling Group, the Not Impossible Foundation and Graffiti Research Lab, uses low-cost eye-tracking glasses and open-source software to allow people suffering from any kind of neuromuscular syndrome to write and draw by tracking their eye movement and translating it to lines on a screen. The device was created for Tony "Tempt" Quan, an L.A.-based graffiti artist who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease in 2003. After trying the EyeWriter  the first time he'd drawn anything since he was fully paralyzed  Quan said, "It feels like taking a breath after being held underwater for five minutes."